The Killing Jar (23 page)

I couldn't miss the note of disdain in her voice, and guilt wrenched at my heart. A lot of people don't know this, but twins often balance each other out. When one is up, the other is down. When one is rebellious, the other tends to be obedient. When one is sick, the other becomes healthy. While I was away at Eclipse becoming the ultimate version of myself, Erin had been at home, withering with illness.

“Do you know why I'm sick again?” Erin asked. She'd always been better at reading my mind than I was at reading hers.

“I guess the fix wasn't permanent.” I remembered what the dead version of Erin had said to me during my bad trip the other night.

Nothing lasts forever, not death and not life
.

My sister's gaze moved to stare past my shoulder and she murmured, “‘All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.'”

“What did you say?” I asked sharply, chills dotting my spine.

“It's a line from
Hamlet
,” Erin said. “It's what Gertrude tells Hamlet when his father dies.” Her eyes darkened behind her cracked glasses. “I've told you that line before. Remember?”

And then I did. She had quoted it to me when she'd come so close to dying. My mind had retained the meaning of the quote, but not the exact words, and had tormented me with it during my bad trip on the midnight glory.

“I remember,” I said, nodding. “You're about a thousand times smarter than me, you know that?”

“That's because all I could ever do without hurting myself was sit in the house and read.” Her eyes drifted past me and she sighed. “That time in the hospital, when I asked you to say goodbye to me…”

I swallowed hard, choking on emotion. “I couldn't do it. I still can't.”

She nodded, as though we agreed on this. “I don't want to go back to the way I was,” she said. “I know this sounds terrible, but I think I'd rather die than do that.” Her eyes grew watery. “You want to hear something ironic?”

“Sure.”

“Before I died, I wasn't afraid to die. I hated my body for being so frail. I wanted out of it. It was a prison. But then you brought me back and gave me a new body, and while you were gone I tried to do as many of the things I'd missed out on as I possibly could. I walked for hours in the forest. I ran on the trails. Kenna, I climbed a tree. I know it's silly, but I'd never done that before. And you know what? It was one of the most amazing things I've ever done. Why didn't you tell me what it was like to climb a t-tree?” Her voice hitched. “Now I'm terrified to die. I want this life, but not the old way. I want all the things I've been missing.”

I nodded. I knew exactly what she meant. “I'm going to make sure you get what you want.”

From the woods came a crack of twigs. I looked up, expecting to see another branch falling, but instead I found a stag with an impressive cradle of antlers striding through the trees less than ten feet from us.

I didn't think. Didn't hesitate. It was like that night in the basement all over again. Instinct took over, only this time instinct didn't lead me to cull everything in sight.

Only the stag.

I thrust out my hands, and my vena whipped from my palms and attached to the stag. It moaned like the hull of an old ship hitting rough water as its anima siphoned into me. I wanted to hold on to the anima, to experience what it was like to be the stag, this regal, dignified creature, all power and purpose and nobility.

But this anima was not for me.

I culled until the stag was sapped, its body a withered casing that fell to the forest floor with a hollow
thunk,
like a heavy sack of flour being dropped. I didn't realize until I turned my attention back to Erin that she was saying my name. Saying it again and again in horror.

“Kenna, no! Please stop!”

Her eyes were wide, and she was trying to sit up, to scoot away from me. She cried out as she jarred her broken wrist. Distantly, I was aware that she was afraid of me, repulsed by me, but with the stag's anima blanketing my mind I couldn't be concerned.

“Give me your hand,” I said. My voice sounded like wind blowing through an old house, low and resonant.

Instead, Erin yanked her good hand away, so I planted both of my hands flat on her chest and pushed with all my might, as though trying to shove my way through a stuck door. The strands attached to her like IV tubes and anima poured from my body to hers. She released a hissing gasp, her eyes bulging from her head, light surrounding her whole body. Her back arched and her legs convulsed and her gasp became a scream. I saw her change before my eyes, watched her hair thicken and her skin go from chalky pale to a warm honey glow. Her muscles filled out and her wrist straightened.

And all the while she screamed.

And then silence.

It was over. The glow around her body faded, and inside I felt dark as a cave.

Erin sat up abruptly. She shot to her feet and I stood too, watching as she ripped her arm from the sling. Then she charged at me in fury and shoved me hard.

“I told you to stop! Why didn't you listen?”

I was breathless, my mind spinning like a top right before it goes out of control. “It worked. Your arm, all of you … I healed you.”

To show me her arm was healed, she shoved me again.

“Why didn't you stop?” She was crying now, and I was bewildered.

“You said you'd rather die than go back to being sick.”

“I—I didn't know how it would be! I didn't know you'd do
that
.” She pointed an accusing finger, not at me, but at the corpse of the deer. “You were hurting it. It was horrible, Kenna. Is that what you did while you were at Eclipse? Killed animals? Sucked the life out of them like you did to Jason Dunn?”

I inhaled a sharp breath and shook my head rapidly. “No. No, of course not.”

“I don't believe you.”

Voices from the woods. My mom calling our names. She must have heard Erin shout.

Erin pushed me again, lighter this time, not to hurt me or knock me down. It was like she was lashing out, only in defeat.

“I can't let you do that to me again,” she told me. “I was wrong. I want to live, but … not like this. Not like you.”

My sister whirled around and ran from me.

“Erin, wait!” I charged after her.

Through the trees, I saw two figures with flashlights. Erin threw herself into my mom's waiting arms and started sobbing. Blake headed straight for me.

“What happened?” he asked. “Why is she crying?”

I opened my mouth to explain about the deer, and then closed it again and shook my head. The emptiness in me was all-consuming. I needed to take anima, and I knew I couldn't do it with Blake watching, not after Erin's reaction.

Her words cut me, as sharp as any knife.

I want to live, but not like this. Not like you.

“We'll talk later,” I said to Blake, my voice coming out flat and deflated. “There's something I have to do.”

*   *   *

I walked to the river, culling plants along the way, but for some reason their anima didn't satisfy me the way the anima at Eclipse had. Maybe that was because I had so recently culled a much more potent source of anima, and now everything in comparison seemed inadequate. What I wanted was another stag, to be filled with anima that made me feel mighty, formidable. To taste that experience again, if only temporarily.

But Erin was right. What I had done to that deer was horrifying. Necessary, but still it must have come as a shock to her to witness it firsthand. I must have seemed like a monster, every bit as repellent as the moth creature I'd imagined in the forest.

Would she ever see me the way she used to? Would my own twin turn away from me now that she knew what I was?

She had brought up Jason Dunn when she railed at me. So she had figured it out … She knew I had killed him.

I sank down by the bank of the river and bent to look at myself in the water. The moon was behind me, and the water reflected its light like a mirror. The smell of pine and the mossy scent of river water perfumed the air. I thought of the day I'd found Clint Eastwood's kittens, their bodies limp and their fur matted with mud. And Clint Eastwood's body, mutilated. Her head missing entirely. To this day, Erin still didn't know what Jason had been, but now she knew what I was, and she hated it.

A cloud moved over the moon, turning the river dark. A drop of cold water landed on the side of my nose, and more peppered my cheeks and forehead. Seconds later, a deluge began.

I stood and ran back toward my house. I'd just entered the barren perimeter of trees when a flashlight beam stopped me in my tracks.

“Kenna, is that you?” It was Blake.

I stopped running. He didn't have an umbrella or a raincoat, and his hair was plastered to his head, his T-shirt drenched and sticking to his skin.

Blake lowered the flashlight so it wasn't shining in my eyes. “I know you wanted to be alone, but I got worried when it started to rain.”

“It's okay,” I said, hugging myself to keep warm. “I'm finished out here.”

“You're shivering. Come on, let's get inside.”

I didn't move. “How's Erin?”

He hesitated. “She's freaked out, but your mom is handling her. She's just happy whatever you did worked.”

I clenched my fists, my palms slick with rain. It worked, but if Erin wouldn't allow me to heal her again then ultimately it wouldn't matter. Unless I forced anima on her. I could do that, sneak into her room while she was sleeping and dose her with a little anima every day. Maybe that would be enough to keep her healthy. Maybe I didn't need to cull such potent anima to sustain her.

I didn't know. All I knew was that Erin was disgusted with me, and it made me feel disgusted with myself, too.

Blake tried to take my arm to pull me in the direction of the house, but I yanked away. I could feel the anima flowing inside him like a self-contained river. And I wanted it. I wanted
him
.

I didn't know what I was doing. One second I was pulling away from him. The next I had knocked the flashlight from his hand. It fell to the ground, pointing away from us. Then I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to mine. For a moment he was too stunned to react, but when he did there was none of the politeness that had been present in our first kiss. This one was all fervor and need. Rain poured down our faces, caught in our lashes, and wet our lips. I relished the feel of Blake's mouth moving on mine, and the sense of anima flowing just on the other side of his skin.

His lips tracked down over my rain-drenched chin to my neck. He kissed my collarbone. My fingers disappeared in his hair. I drew him down onto the soggy ground on top of me. The forest floor was soft with the ash of crumbled trees, silty like the dust from a moth's wing. And there
were
moth wings beneath us. Hundreds, thousands of them. They blanketed the ground like fall leaves.

Blake hesitated, refusing to put his full weight on top of me. He looked bewildered, eyes wild, breathing as hard as if he'd just finished a marathon.

I yanked him down again, needing to feel his anima.

“We can't, um, you know,” he said, knuckling his forehead in a way that made him seem too young, too innocent to be doing this.

“We won't. I just want to be close to you,” I said. “As close as I can be.”

He bowed over me and grazed my lips softly with his, holding back. But I needed more urgency. I needed more
need
.

I rolled him over and straddled him so I could be in control, and found myself pinning him with his elbows over his head as I crushed my mouth down on his. I moved my hands to his chest, planted my palms there.

A memory flashed into my mind. Images. Fragmented perceptions. Jason Dunn's empty eyes. My hand grabbing his arm. A vein of energy reaching out from the center of my palm to connect me to him, so I could drink his life. His light.

I sat up, rain pouring down my back, blinking at my hands still flat on Blake's chest. The dropped flashlight pointed into my eyes, seeming accusatory. A tickling sensation had started in the center of my palms, hair-thin strands of my vena uncoiling like tenuous bridges.

I shot to my feet and Blake sat up, dazed, chest heaving. “What's wrong? Did I do something?”

I backed away from him, holding up my hands as if to ward him off like a wolf I'd happened upon in the woods.

“Stay away from me, Blake,” I told him. “You're my best friend, and I love you, but stay the hell away from me.”

 

S
PLINTERS
AND
S
TAINS

When the doorbell rang the next morning, I knew before answering that it would be Blake. The rash of texts I'd received from him since I'd left him last night foretold his visit.

He lifted the black guitar case he carried by his side. “I thought you might want this back now that you're home.”

“Oh, right. Thanks.” I hadn't even thought about the guitar since I got home. My mind was still struggling to wake up from the dream that was Eclipse. I felt like I'd been ripped from the deepest sleep.

The rain had ceased sometime during the night, and morning dawned bright as sunflowers, although no amount of sunlight could turn the land around my house into anything other than a circle of depressing gray. How could gray have ever been my color? It was a miserable color. But, then, I'd been a miserable person. That had changed at Eclipse, and now I felt the pull of that place like a tide drawing me back. I missed my other bed, missed my room with its potbellied stove and my mom's antique guitar, even though I had to keep it hidden beneath my bed, where it still lay. I missed the Kalyptra, and the air that seemed to carry every scent and sound farther than the air in the rest of the world. If someone were baking bread inside Eclipse House, I could smell it from the field. If someone sang in the orchard, I could name every note. Even the sky there seemed different—deeper and bluer and more dramatic, regardless of whether my view of it was enhanced by anima.